How to sabotage success 'Overnight'

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, December 2, 2004

"Overnight" is more than simply a raw-nerve success-gone-sour story. It's a revenge tale, and the directors come out on top.

Boston-born, Los Angeles-based bartender and bouncer Troy Duffy became an overnight success in 1997 when he sold his first script, a violent vigilante thriller, to Miramax films in a sweetheart deal. Along with a hefty check, the untried talent got from Harvey Weinstein a shot at directing, final cut and co-ownership of the L.A. bar he tends.

He invited his friends and his garage band, The Brood, along for the ride, and hired Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith to document his success story.

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To say that Duffy becomes insufferable sounds cute, like a sitcom swelled head who goes all prima donna. In such shows, the hero would crash back to earth and pick himself up sadder but wiser, with a hard-earned lesson in modesty and apologies to his much-abused friends.

"Overnight" is no sitcom and Duffy is hardly a lovable lout. He rides his success right into the ground, driving away his friends, would-be collaborators and bandmates with threats, tantrums and sheer insolence.

Duffy plays to the camera as if this were a mockumentary of a Hollywood success story, backstabbing and bad-mouthing like a spoiled kid drunk on his own conceit. "This is the first time in the history of Hollywood that ..." is the opening of far too many proclamations by the pontificating would-be mogul. "They're going to pay dearly" is often heard when his deal sours, his film "The Boondock Saints" becomes an overripe straight-to-video thriller and his CD flops.

The look of the film is rough, but the content is rougher. Montana and Smith get unprecedented and unguarded access to some of the most grotesque and contemptuous behavior you are likely to see on the screen.

The caustic cautionary tale of overnight success sabotaged by vanity and arrogance is perversely fascinating, to be sure, but blunt and ineloquent. Duffy is so smug and unpleasant that it takes a commitment to see his willing public humiliation through to the bitter end.